A VISIT TO AN OBSERVATORY. 99 



supposed view of the duties of the astronomer which 

 are here so humorously portrayed. The popular notion 

 of the way in which astronomical discoveries are made is 

 often ver}' wide of the truth. It seems sometimes to be 

 thought that the astronomer in search of some crowning' 

 triumph sits gazing with ecstatic rapture through the 

 tube until suddenly some majestic, and hitherto utterly 

 unheard of, celestial body soars into his view, and he 

 immediately records an immortal discovery. The fact is 

 that when an astronomer goes into his observatory for 

 his night's work he finds it usually convenient to leave 

 all the ecstatic and most of the poetic portions of his 

 constitution outside. He arrays himself in costume, not 

 with a view to the sublimity of the universe, but to- 

 the effectual keeping out of the cold. It is not the 

 stupendous size of the celestial bodies that so often 

 appals him ; he is rather straining his attention to the 

 effort of hiding a tiny star behind the spider web of 

 his micrometer. 



But though it may be generally true that the work of 

 the observatory is essentially a routine almost of a prosaia 

 character, yet the astronomer must indeed be of a callous 

 nature who does not feel the noble character of the occu- 

 pation to which his nights are devoted. I propose in these 

 pages to give a sketch of what the visitor to the obser- 

 vatory may reasonably expect to see, if his or her visit 

 be appropriately timed. It must be remembered that the 

 celestial objects are not always to be observed. It is no 

 doubt true that Saturn or the great nebula in Orion are 

 like the Matterhorn or the Falls of Niagara, always to be 

 seen if the visitor could only go to the right place. But 



